22nd August
Hello and welcome back to our regular feature where we write a little about the games we’ve been playing. This week, Mat J gets philosophical on us; Connor plays Minesweeper for some reason; and Bertie rallies the wonderful Eurogamer readers for a second week of Big Walk wholesome hilarity.
What have you been playing this week?
Here’s another question: do you remember what you were playing last week? You don’t have to! The What We’ve Been Playing archive has you covered.
Sobosuba, PC
If you don’t spend a lot of time on Bluesky, a conversation about games that play themselves might have slipped the corners of your vision. If you’d like to read the inciting observation then head over to Jank. The argument’s compelling enough: how much are we actually playing a video game that largely plays itself? What are we getting out of the experience if we don’t really need to be that involved?
Critic Chris Franklin would point out this is a type of deconstruction which only really used to be levied at narrative games, that the absence of meaningful player interaction was in knowing the experience could only end along a predetermined path. It’s new to extend that line of thinking to something like Vampire Survivors, where the goal is to reposition yourself for 30 minutes and essentially just select items you think will allow that to continue.
If you want to, you can probably apply this to any game. For instance: you just stack blocks on top of each other and make lines of them that disappear so you can keep doing it? Or: you chuck orbs at the other orbs at the top of the screen and if they’re the right colour they fall down? You could probably do this for being alive if you really wanted – it’s all just breathing in and out, is it?
Anyway! In sobosuba you merge little blobs together. It’s like that game where you merge types of fruit together. The blobs get bigger the more matches you make, and they’ve got soft-body physics so they’ll all wobble about. I hate it; I’ve been playing it all week.
-Mat J
Minesweeper, mobile
I was out of data for like two whole days this week! What a nightmare. It forced me back to the old faithful, the tried-and-true: Minesweeper. The gaming equivalent of playing with rocks you find on the ground during a power cut.
It really is a brilliant little game. A puzzle where you try to find mines hidden in a big grid using numbers to work out how likely nearby they are. Trying to speak about minesweeper in 2026 is hilarious because it’s a known quantity: everyone knows the deal.
Nonetheless, there’s this brilliant moment in Minesweeper where the numbers just make sense, and you can pick out safe spaces with just a quick glance. I love seeing a big red three next to three clickable spots. I love it when you click a safe spot and a massive patch gets unlocked.
-Connor
Big Walk, PC
A little collection of pics from the night.
We managed a week-two! The Eurogamer readers – you Eurogamer readers – and I took to Big Walk for a second week of extraordinary adventures. I wrote about our previous Big Walk adventures for Optimism Week, in case you’re curious. With a third adventure planned Tuesday 25th evening (you are more than welcome to join, just pop into the Eurogamer Discord) we’re in danger of making this a regular thing.
This week, with a bit more experience, we broke into two teams of four-ish people ostensibly to cover more ground and solve more puzzles. We sort of did that. We found a megaphone, which was a mistake; we hacked our way up a rocky cliff by alternately picking each other up and throwing people, and then got lost; and we made a tower of people sitting on fold-out chairs, for no apparent reason other than a nice screenshot. But we actually Achieve with a capital A, and do some stuff, like turn the chair lift on and the train, choo choo. Bleeuaah bleeauaah? It makes a hilariously horrid noise.
There are too many micro-stories and moments to share – Big Walk is a game of such things, of being beside people, of noticing together – but I continue to be impressed by how generous a package it is. There is a whole world here, an island playground, and it’s just dense enough to provide things to do without giving you so much to do that you fill your time doing rather than being. Big Walk is about being around people and enjoying that.
Can I also just quickly praise the puzzles? My partner – who was in the other group – told me about a puzzle that involved just, well, sitting together – I don’t want to say too much! Without anything to actually do, people simply talked, she said, talking about their lives and themselves. I find that remarkable – subtly, quietly, unremarkably remarkable. Which other game encourages that?
Around that, I’ve dabbled in The Lord of the Rings: The War in the North – surprisingly enjoyable – and had some decent runs in Hades 2.
-Bertie
